Four convicted in 2010 Ventotene cliff collapse

Two girls, 13, killed by landslide

(ANSA) - Rome, February 24 - Four people were convicted
Monday in the 2010 collapse of a cliff that killed two teenage
girls on Ventotene, including the mayor and former mayor of the
well-known tourist island off the west-central coast of Italy.

Mayor Giuseppe Assenso got two years and four months in jail
for negligent manslaughter for a landslide prosecutors said
could have been averted, as did the head of the municipal
engineering office, Pasquale Romano.

Former mayor Vito Biondo and Luciano Pizzuti, head of the
municipal civil engineering department in the provincial capital
on the mainland, Latina, both got a year and 10 months.

Prosecutors had asked for two years and three months for
Assenso, Romano and Pizzuti, and requested the former mayor be
acquitted.

The four were convicted of failing to secure the cliff
despite signs of degradation, subsidence and water infiltration
after heavy rains.

The two 14-year-old girls died on a school trip on April 20,
when the cliff came down on the island in the Tyrrhenian Sea
south of Rome.

One girl, Sara Panuccio, died immediately and the other,
Francesca Colonello, died in hospital after being resuscitated
at the scene, a well-known beach at the small rocky island's
port.

A third girl, Atena Raco, 13, was seriously injured.

She was intubated and put on a 'code red' emergency copter
to a hospital in Latina south of Rome, where she took months to
recover.

A boy suffered a broken leg.

The four were in a party of Rome middle-school students who
were on a two-day visit to the island.

They were allowed onto the Cala Rossano beach as a "reward"
for behaving properly on a tour round the island's Roman port.

After a while a few of the 42 students decided to take
shelter from the sun and the rocks came down on them almost
immediately.

The cliff gave no warning it was about to fall, eye
witnesses said.

"The collapse was instantaneous, there was nothing that
could have warned us," said Matteo Valle, a geologist working
for the Mediterranea Viaggi tour company.

"I saw two enormous pieces of rock break off and crush the
girls. They fell straight down onto the beach," he said.

Five teachers and a guide suffered shock.

Counselling was being provided for the dead students'
classmates.

Ventotene Mayor Assenso, a doctor who tried to revive the
girls, said "the cliff had never shown signs of giving way".

Despite this, it had been reinforced with fencing a year
ago, he said.

The mayor said other parts of the cliff had been examined
for signs of erosion but not the section over the beach.

The Lazio regional Civil Protection department said the
party from the Anna Magnani middle school was not in a zone
ruled off-limits to tourists.

In 2009 a Roman woman was injured by a rock that fell off
a cliff into the sea in another part of the island.

A member of the centre-left Democratic Party, Raffaele
Ranucci, said he had warned the government in April 2009 to do
something about the risk of falling rocks, after the island was
"lacerated" by heavy winter rains.

TOURIST ISLAND WITH HISTORICAL PAST.

Ventotene is a tourist island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, 25
nautical miles off the coast of Gaeta on the border between
Lazio and Campania.

Together with Zanone, Santo Stefano, Palmarola and Ponza, it
is part of the Pontine Islands.

Ponza is a very popular destination for tourists but the
less accessible Ventotene, a prison island under Mussolini, also
draws its fair share of visitors.

Many are students of history attracted by Ventotene's past.

Several Roman noblewomen including Augustus's daughter Julia
and Vespasian's granddaughter St Flavia Domitilla were banished
there, most for flouting codes of conduct.

In 2009 five Roman ships were found off Ventotene's
coast and their almost intact cargo of olive oil, 'garum' fish
paste and metal ingots hauled up for display.

During Mussolini's time, one of the 700 opponents of his
regime held on the island, Altiero Spinelli, wrote what is now
called the Ventotene Manifesto promoting his vision of a united
Europe.

At his death in 1986 Spinelli was remembered as one of the
founding fathers of the European Union.